Category Archives: punk

I’m not going to lie and say these are essential Wipers albums. There are great songs that are ultimately marred by some weird production choices. The drums have weird 80s reverb on them, the guitars are too clean sounding. I can’t help thinking everything could have been flatter sounding, or done with natural room reverb instead. Dunno. I figure Wipers is Wipers and deserves available decent rips.

Remember, this is not the place to start with the Wipers. For that, you absolutely need THE BOX SET.

While part of the Big Idea behind punk rock was to rewrite the rules of what a rock band could do, surprisingly few groups bothered to challenge the basic framework of the traditional rock band — most punk bands consisted of two guitars, bass, and drums, just like the majority of the acts they were supposed to render obsolete. One of the rare exceptions to this was the Screamers, who were among the most radical (and, surprisingly, also among the most popular) of the first wave of L.A. punk outfits. Refusing to bow to the hegemony of the guitar, the Screamers’ lineup consisted of two heavily distorted electronic keyboards (Tommy Gear on ARP synthesizer, and usually Paul Roessler on Fender Rhodes electric piano), a violently metronomic drummer (K.K. Barrett), and a howling maniac on lead vocals (Tomata du Plenty). While the absence of guitars certainly gave the band a sound all its own, even the most cursory listen to the music makes it clear this wasn’t synth pop or experimental art music — this was punk rock in all its ranting glory. By all accounts, the Screamers were one of the most popular bands on the Los Angeles scene between 1977 and 1980, where they could sell out most clubs for two- or three-night stands, and nearly every account of the early California punk movement testifies to their influence and importance.

However, beyond a handful of gigs in New York, they never played outside the West Coast and, for a variety of reasons, the band never put out a record. “In a Better World” is a gray-market collection (reportedly created with the participation of two former members of the band) that compiles a number of live performances and rare studio demos from the Screamers. If the fidelity isn’t terribly consistent, it’s at least adequate and sometimes quite good and, between the band’s wild, blaring sound, du Plenty’s remarkable stage banter, and the passionate energy of the songs — sometimes comical (“Magazine Love,” “I’ll Go Steady With Twiggy” ) and sometimes sinister (“122 Hours of Fear,” “I Wanna Hurt” ) — this set finally offers hard evidence that the band’s legend had a very real basis in fact. Just as California punk was generally faster, wilder, and less arty than its New York counterpart, the Screamers were the L.A. scene’s relative corollary to Suicide, and “In a Better World” makes clear they were just as smart, just as innovative, and just as gifted as that fine band. Until the day that a fully authorized Screamers anthology comes along, this set will fill the void quite nicely.

Nervous Gender created what is probably the ultimate synth-punk album, when you consider that 25 years later this still sounds as fresh as it did back in the day, not to mention that it’s still hugely influential.

The root of their sound is clearly the no-wave of the late-70’s, and of course the work of The Normal, early Tuxedomoon, The Screamers etc. Nevertheless, it is Nervous Gender that are the ultimate exponents of the genre.

The songs vibrate with a hysteric edge, the synthesizers shriek like air raids, and the lyrics are spurred with a heretic ferocity (“Monsters”, “Fat Cow”, “Nothing To Hide”). The second side, supposedly done by Beelzebub Youth but actually by Nervous Gender too, is even more conceptual, abstract and cacophonous (“Christian Lovers”, “Exorcism”, “Bathroom Sluts”).